Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB SSD Review

[nextpage title=”Introduction”]

There are many components in a PC that can be upgraded to make it faster, but none are as noticeable in the real world as upgrading a hard drive to a solid state drive. They have come down significantly in price over the last few years, so it’s now cheaper than ever to upgrade your PC. While some months ago 120 GiB units offered the best cost/benefit ratio, now the times of the 240 GiB units are coming. Today, we will test a new 240 GiB drive from Kingston, the HyperX FURY, which is focused on the low-cost market.

The Kingston HyperX FURY can be found in 120 GiB and 240 GiB capacities. The model we are analysing today has 256 GiB of memory inside, but is sold as 240 GiB, since 16 GiB is reserved for overprovisioning, used by the garbage collection and wear leveling mechanisms of the unit.

In our tests, we will compare the performance of the HyperX FURY 240 GiB against the popular value SSD from the same manufacturer, the SSDNow V300, with the same capacity. This should be a very interesting comparison, as both are based on the same controller: the SandForce SF-2281.

Figure 1: the Kingston HyperX Fury 240 GiB

Figure 2: the Kingston SSDNow V300 240 GiB

Before proceeding, we highly suggest that you read our “Anatomy of SSD Units” tutorial, which provides all the background information you need to know about SSDs. Both of the SSDs featured in this review use MLC memory chips.

In the table below we compare the Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB with the Kingston SSDNow V300 240 GiB. Both units use a SATA-600 interface, are based on the 2.5” form factor, and are 7 mm thick (thus fitting some thin notebooks or ultrabooks that require storage devices with this height).

We researched the prices on the day that we published this review. In the table below, we provide a more in-depth technical comparison between the two drives.

[nextpage title=”The Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB”]

The Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB comes in a simple blister package. Along with the SSD unit itself, there are a case sticker and a frame that can be sticked to the top of the drive, in order to make it mechanically compatible with notebooks that require a 9.5 mm thick device, since the HyperX FURY is only 7 mm thick.

Figure 3: package

Figure 4: accessories

The HYperX FURY features a metal casing which is lightweight and rigid. It should do a good job of protecting the internal components. The bottom cover is also made of metal.

Figure 5: the Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB (underside)

In order to open the device, you have to remove the sticker and unscrew four Torx screws.

Figure 6: open

[nextpage title=”Internal Parts”]

The top side of the PCB features eight 16 GiB memory chips. Turning the PCB over reveals eight more eight 16 GiB memory chips alongside the controller.

Figure 7: the Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB PCB

Figure 8: the Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB PCB (underside)

The controller used by the HyperX FURY is a custom (Kingston branded) version of the SandForce SF-2281.

Figure 9: controller

The NAND flash memory chips are Kingston FT16B08UCM1-34.

Figure 10: memory chip

[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]

During our testing procedures, we used the configuration listed below. The only variable component between each benchmarking session was the SSD being tested.

Hardware Configuration

• Processor: Core i7-4770K
• Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Extreme4
• Memory: 16 GB G.Skill Sniper (DDR3-1600/PC3-12800), configured at 1,600 MHz
• Boot drive: Kingston HyperX 3K 480 GiB SSD
• Video card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750
• Video resolution: 1920×1080
• Video monitor: Phillips 236VL
• Power supply: Corsair CX500M

Software Configuration

• Operating System: Windows 7 Home Basic 64-bit using NTFS File System

Benchmarking Software

• CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64
• Iometer

Error Margin

We adopted a 3% error margin in our tests, meaning performance differences of less than 3% can not be considered meaningful. Therefore, when the performance difference between two products is less than 3%, we consider them to have similar performance.

[nextpage title=”Compressible Data Test”]

As you will have gathered from the previous page, we measured the performance of each drive using two different programs: CrystalDiskMark and Iometer.

It is important to note that we connected the SSDs to a SATA-600 port on our motherboard rather than a SATA-300 port, which could cause performance limitations.

We set CrystalDiskMark to “All 0x00 Fill mode” to evaluate the performance of the SSD when dealing with compressible data.

In the sequential read test, the HyperX FURY was 7,9% faster than the SSDNow V300. In the sequential write test, however, they presented the same performance level.

In both the read and write tests using 512 kiB blocks, the Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB showed similar performance level as the SSDNow V300 240 GiB.

In the random read test using 4 kiB blocks, the Kingston HyperX FURY beat the SSDNow V300 by 25 percent. However, in the random write test using 4 kiB blocks, both the drives performed the same way.

[nextpage title=”Incompressible Data Test”]

For this test, we set CrystalDiskMark to the default mode, which uses incompressible data.

In the sequential read test, the Kingston HyperX FURY outperformed the Kingston SSDNow V300 by a margin of 20 percent. In the sequential write test, they performed equally.

Moving on to the random read test using 512 kiB blocks, the Kingston HyperX FURY outperformed the SSDNow V300 by a margin of 10 percent. Again, they come to a tie in the write test using 512 kiB blocks.

In the random read test using 4 kiB blocks, the HyperX FURY was 17,6% faster than the SSDNow V300. By now, was no surprise that they both performed the same way in the 4 kiB write test.

[nextpage title=”Iometer”]

Iometer is an open-source benchmark which lets us synthetically test the input and output operations per second of a storage drive. We will be looking specifically at random read and write scores using 4 kiB blocks.

In the random read test using 4 kiB blocks, the SSDNow V300 reached 58% more I/O operations per second than the HyperX FURY in the read test, and 29% more write operations per second.

[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]

The new Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB SSD does exactly what it is proposed by the manufacturer: offers a slightly higher read performance than the other current value SSD from the manufacturer, being also price-positioned as a budget product. It performed a little better than the older model in all CrystalDiskMark read tests, and exactly the same way in all the write test with the same program.

One of the key aspects of both units is the difference in performance between the compressible and incompressible data tests; the drives performed better in write tests when using compressible data. This is because the Sandforce controller rely on data compression to achieve high speeds.

With a slightly higher price tag than its older brother (a difference that will probably disappear over time), the Kingston HyperX FURY 240 GiB SSD unit is a good deal for users looking for an inexpensive SSD.